RC JOURNAL: Self-Replication in 3D

"Think of RepRap as China on your Desktop"
Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc., 8 April 2008

In the mid to late 70's a small group of tinkerers in the "Homebrew Computer Club" created many of the foundational technologies, techniques and concepts required for personal computers (it also attracted the ire of a protean Bill Gates). The early efforts of the group seem extremely crude by modern standards, but within a decade, it was clear that the process that they had initiated was remaking the world.

A similar tinkering process is now underway in micro-manufacturing. An open source project called RepRap is working on micro machines that can produce (fabricate) products on your desktop. Further, it has achieved self-replication (actually, a very close approximation thereof), so each RepRap machine has the capacity to produce a copy of itself. Again, it's early days, but the implications of how efforts like these will enable DIY production (for everything from consumer products to weapons) are clear as day. Personal fabrication on a global basis is less than a decade away.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

"The early efforts of the group seem extremely crude by modern standards, but within a decade, it was clear that the process that they had initiated was remaking the world.

"A similar tinkering process is now underway in micro-manufacturing."

In _Reinventing Collapse_, Dmitry Orlov criticizes what he calls the "Goddess of Technology," which he characterizes as an American belief that technological fixes will cure what he perceives as systemic problems leading to a collapse of the American Empire analogous to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

This tinkering process appears to be further worship of the "Goddess of Technology." As such, it appears to be inconsistent Orlov's thesis.

Accordingly, we would have to begin with the idea that either Orlov is correct, in which event we can discount this tinkering process; or the tinkerers are correct, in which case we can discount Orlov.

In any event, it would take quite an imagination to envision scenarios in which both Orlov is correct yet the tinkerers remain potent.

[Azr@el]

Until someone can figure out how to purify, polish and etch a chip in a printer then all of this is just PR. The smallest chip plants I've seen are about the size of a large server. But they still require the input of polished silicon wafers, whose manufacture requires a huge magnetic silicon purification plant and then another facility for acid polishing the blanks; a rather nasty process that produces lots of nasty environmental contaminants ( one of the reasons photovoltaic solar power is not truly a green technology ). Now of course this all assumes that transistor chips will continue to be made out of silicon, maybe there'll be a tech migration to another material that will more readily lend itself to "china on a desk". But if I were the Chinese, i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for obsolescences.

[Duncan Kinder]

"But they still require the input of polished silicon wafers, whose manufacture requires a huge magnetic silicon purification plant and then another facility for acid polishing the blanks; a rather nasty process that produces lots of nasty environmental contaminants ( one of the reasons photovoltaic solar power is not truly a green technology ). "

A good reason why we need to look silicon-based solutions in the mouth.

More generally, this relates to replacing our current strategy of sending ever stronger and stronger signals ( via silicon ) with detecting ever weaker and weaker signals.

One model for how resilient communities might thereby evolve was demonstrated by 14th Century Russian society.

A thumbnail sketch of medieval Russian history is as follows:

About 1250 the Mongols crushed Kiev and seized control of the wealthy southern plains, where their cavalry were more effective. However, they left semi-autonomous but subservient the poor, forested north, where their cavalry were less effective.

In the following two centuries, the Russian principalities in the north grew in strength until, about 1450, they rallied under Muscovy and threw off the Mongol yoke.

At issue is how, between 1250 and 1450, they managed so to grow in strength.

According to Timothy Ware in _The Orthodox Church_, monasticism played a crucial role in this 14th century revival:
http://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Church-New-Timothy-Ware/dp/0140146563/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213364379&sr=8-1

"Sergius of Radonexh (?1314-92), the greatest national saint of Russia, is closely connected with the recovery of the land in the fourteenth century. The outward pattern of his life recalls that of St Anthony of Egypt. In early manhood Sergius withdrew into the forests (the northern equivalent of the Egyptian desert) and here he funded a hermitage dedicated to the Holy Trinity. After several years of solitude, his place of retreat became known, disciples gathered round him, and he grew into into a spiritual guide, an 'elder' or starets. Finally ( and here the parallel with Anthony ends ) he turned his group of disciples into a regular monastery, which became within his own lifetime the greatest religious house in the land.....
....Sergius played an active role in politics. A close friend of the Grand Dukes of Moscow, he encouraged the city in its expansion, and it is significant that before the Battle of Kulikovo the leader of the Russian forces...went specially to Sergius to secure his blessing.
....[Sergius' monastery was founded in the wilderness at a distance from the civilized world. Sergius was in his way an explorer and a colonist, pushing forward the boundaries of civilization and subjecting the forest to cultivation. Nor is he the only example of a colonist monk at the time. Others went like him into the forests to become hermits but, in their case as in his, what started soon grew into a regular monastery, with a civilian town outside the walls. Then the whole process would start all over again: a fresh generation of monks in search of the solitary life would make their way into the yet more distant forest, disciples would follow, new communities would form, fresh land would be cleared for agriculture. This steady advance of colonist monks is one of the most striking features of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Russia. From Radonezh and other centres a vast network of religious houses spread swiftly across the whole of north Russia as far as the White Sea and the Arctic Circle....These explorer monks were not only colonists but missionaries...
Sergius has been called the 'Builder of Russia', and such he was in three senses: politically, for he encouraged the rise of Moscow and the resistance against the Tarters; geographically, fir it was he more than any other who inspired the great advance of monks into the forests; and spiritually, for through his experience of mystical prayer he deepened the inner lif of the Russian Church.
....These two centuries were also a golden age of Russian religious art."

[Azr@el]

The Russians eventually defeated their Neo-Mongol overlords by emulating them. The cossacks were little more than Mongol mingaans/hazaras where Eastern orthodoxy mixed with Mongol Shamanism. Will one day Hezbollah open up a few saraya franchises stateside where bible thumping evangelicalism will mix with Shia warrior mysticism. Please stop the train: I'm getting off here thank you.